Château de la Poste - Domaine de Ronchinne

The rangy terrace of Château de la Poste overlooks a deep, wooded valley typical of the bucolic beauty of southern Belgium. The terrace is just part of a genuinely satisfying ambience generated by the collective of design, space and patrimony at this recently refurbished 42-room country house hotel. “We wanted to create an alternative weekend escape to the North Sea coast,” explains Jean-Michel André, one of the four owners of the 42-hectare property some 80km south of Brussels. “The spirit of the hotel should remind guests of a second home. We did not want to create a ‘design hotel’. Rather a place where the whole atmosphere is more important than the design,” he continues. This is not to say that the hotel lacks a strong design theme. To the contrary, the hotel exhibits a playful mix of modern furnishings and decoration. Without excessive glamour they tastefully offset the traditional aspects of the structure. It is a blend of the austere and chic.

This combination is seen in the thoughtfully moderate refurbishment and mix of affordable design. The restoration is not perfect – some floorboards are damaged, the fire doors lack subtlety, curtain tracking is exposed – but the heritage of the building shines through. Originally dark, the wood panelling has been sandblasted back to a brighter, rougher finish. Bio-ethanol fuelled fires glow within vast stone fireplaces. Marble mantelpieces are left bare to celebrate their natural beauty. Classic wing-backed chairs and comfy sofas sit on top of cowhides stained in dark greens and oranges. Deferring to the rural location, cowhide wall tiles from Elitis are adorned with plywood, slot-together constructions resembling stuffed deer-heads by Elric Petit of Big Game. The hotel’s grounds include magnificent crimson beech, oaks and firs, brought into the hotel by large tree-over-tree photo-ensembles by Nicolas Le Beuan Bénic.

Light fittings provide a more contemporary touch. Ubiquitous Tom Dixon mirror ball lamps float in the stairwell. Flos-manufactured Skygarden pendant lamps by Marcel Wanders and the Taraxacum by Achille Castiglioni light the public areas. Artemide’s orange and black Tolomeo Micro adjustable desk lamps add contrast in the guestrooms.
The hotel positions itself as both a weekend retreat for families and venue for midweek corporate business. For the former there are several larger family rooms in an annex, the Petit Château, across an open gravel-covered courtyard from the stone edifice of the Château with its pseudo-Gothic turrets. The Petit Château is also home to a games room and simple screening room plus seven variably sized meeting rooms. A further four event spaces are available in the Orangerie, a smaller courtyard arrangement of buildings slightly up the slope. Beneath the terrace of the main Château and overlooking the gardens is the black and white tiled floor of the Salle de Ball ballroom.

The relatively small number of guestrooms makes exclusive access affordable and allows the terrace to come into its own. It is situated immediately in front of the majority of rooms and has something of a “ski-resort feel to it” explains General Manager, Thierry Durand, “with a central ‘brasero’ fireplace”. The Qrater, to use its product name, is a broad and shallow weathered-steel dish, housing a log fire. Heaters and blankets warm guests lounging on the inflatable plastic “chesterfield” sofas or “riding” the opaque plastic high and low Bronco stools, all from Extremis.

Following its birth as the second home of Princess Clémentine of Belgium in 1895, the Château was acquired by the Belgium Post Office as a residential holiday venue. The ugly, white UPVC windows are a legacy of this ownership, the replacement of which were outside the scope of the €3 million renovation budget. The Post Office’s conversion also resulted in ill-placed corner bathroom facilities that occupied the full height of the tall rooms. “By removing these and inserting the bathrooms in smaller blocks within the rooms I have managed to revive the true volumes,” explains Olivia Gustot, the architect who won the competition to reinterpret the Château. Etienne Van den Bergh of Iceberg Architect Studio provided additional architectural support. The volumes are further enhanced by carefully positioned mirrors. The new bathrooms are tiled with bottle-green glazed Metro tiles. The green theme continues in the rooms with a mossy grey-green tone to walls and the shaggy, long-thread fitted carpets from Balta.

Gustot’s other main intervention was to bring former storage rooms into use as the more intimate element of the Clémentine Restaurant; the orange hint to the menus a subtle link between the colour of the eponymous fruit and the former owner.

The simple, almost Quaker-style of the wood panelled wall treatment of this section of the restaurant is based on the pattern of the glazed wall tiles of the former creamery of the Château. This is now a great little semi-private dining area where the dark chocolate paint finish of the upper walls and ceiling create intimacy.

Most of the furniture and lighting in the hotel were supplied by Belgian-based Marie’s Corner. The majority of the furniture has been designed by founder, Marie-Laetitia Zichy and comprises classic elements plus more unusually fashioned pieces such as the Brazil, a Chesterfield studded, armless lounger in a high-sheen gold leather, and the Oriental-style Santa Fe stools.

Marie’s Corner have supplied numerous hotels to date including The George, Hamburg (reviewed in Sleeper Issue 24) so are no slouches when it comes to hotel projects. André felt the mix of their own designs was more homely than contract and therefore perfect for this latest project. When the original interior designer dropped out of the project, Zichy took the opportunity to move Marie’s Corner’s involvement from mere supplier to designer. “I tried to project myself into the spaces,” Zichy explains of her rationale. “I was pleased when the first guest comments referred to the interiors as having a ‘lived-in’ feel.” Exactly the impact for which André was looking.

CHÂTEAU DE LA POSTE
25 Ronchinne, 5330 Maillen, Belgium
Tel: +32 81 411 405
www.châteaudelaposte.be

Rooms    42 guestrooms
Dining    Chez Clémentine Restaurant Bar & Terrace
Drinking   Fumoir Cigar Lounge
Facilities    Salle de Ball ballroom, 7 meeting rooms in Petit Château plus cinema & games room, 4 meeting rooms in the Orangerie